Her Last Regret
by Lady Bloodless
Summary: One-shot. Tess' last moments on Earth before incinerating the base in order to protect her son and cause a momentary distraction.


**A/N: **I do not own Roswell or any of the characters created. The creation of the show and series belongs to Melissa Metz and Katims, respectively.

I am standing in front of the fence that separates me from now and eternity. I have left behind a girl that I despise, I envy…she's sitting safely in the piece of shit car behind me, staring numbly ahead in shocked compassion. The kind of human emotion that I never had large quantities of and now it is too late to try and learn Liz Parker's secrets—I came back here to save my son from the homicidal grasp of its new leaders and once again I am the outsider.

Or perhaps I always had been. Michael Guerin, Maria DeLuca, Liz Parker, Kyle Valenty, Max and Isabel Evans…they had all been a group before they had even known each other. An invisible cord of fate tying them all in such a fashion that it was too tight, too hard for someone like me to penetrate. I was so jealous of their closeness, of the way they had all stood up for each other and taken leaps both metaphorical and literal.

The only time I had ever felt apart of anything was when I was with Max. When I had thought that perhaps he had finally accepted me wholly—that our fate was a true and tangible thing I was in the circle. However, I learned quickly that it would never be the case and that no matter what I had been taught to believe…I was wrong.

Yes, I had taken the life of Alex Whitman and I will maintain until my death that it was an accident. Never could I have anticipated that he would fight so hard against me, that he could have broken through the barriers of befuddlement that I had blocked him in. A burst of something akin to electricity had burned through me, white hot and full of fear and it had consumed Alex and had nearly done the same to Kyle had I not run out of energy.

Before I knew it my cards had been played, there was no way back. _Keep moving forward, never look back and never tell._ My world had fallen apart, my jealousy and anger getting the better of me just before departure from Earth for what I had assumed would be the last time.

I had been launched into space…alone.

**My hand burns through the mesh in the fence, the flash of red and I'm taking a deep breath before I am invisible.**

That was always something I was good at, being invisible. Never noticed until I wanted to be noticed and by then it was too late, I was taught so very well after all. I was reminded why I was doing this by a sudden tug at my breast and the gaping hole in my heart grew ever more. _Zan, I'm doing this for you, my baby. The only person that means anything, I'm doing this for you._

For all that I had done wrong in the past I did not regret having him. Once I saw his face, eyes already open and blinking wide in wonder, I knew that I could never want anything else for him except safety. Peace. **And so I ran, the klaxons and sirens already screaming, soldiers firing blindly into the night, but I was too fast for them to see. **I was killing again, ribbons of blood streaking my skin and matting my hair.

I was running to the center of it all, to the scene of my newest crime. My powers were failing, my body screaming for a release from it all and that is when the inferno tore out of me in a scream. The fire was consuming everything around me and I knew that my last sounds of this world would be those of pain and anguish. And all that I would hear was mine own desperation.

And just before she was consumed by a pillar of fire, before all her sins were burned away forever, before she was a pillar of ash she was a fair-haired child staring in wonder through the metallic ceilings of an unfeeling, unfamiliar place. She would know her last regret to be this:

_If only I could have saved __you__, baby girl. If only I could have brought you here Zoe, I hope you find your brother someday._

A mountain of fire blew itself up into the night, illuminating everything clear as daybreak and the creature finally known as the woman Tess was gone. Nothing but a scorch mark in the burnt hull of hell.


End file.
